How play and experimentation in digital playgrounds can drive human performance

A digital playground is not a singular place or virtual platform. Rather, it’s a mindset and an approach in which technologies are curated with intention and opportunities to use them are democratized. It’s a safe space for workers to build confidence, learn new skills, and hone their human capabilities.² Safety in this context refers to psychological safety—where individuals do not risk punishment or humiliation for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and where they are safe to take interpersonal risks.³ It also refers to spaces where workers can experiment with new processes and technologies without putting business outcomes at risk.

As they play with the possibilities of a new, technologically enabled future on this playground, both workers and organizations can gain experience and achieve enhanced business outcomes (i.e., innovation) faster than real-world conditions might allow.

One example of the broad application of multiple digital playground technologies is the Vancouver Airport Authority launching a virtual, real-time interactive representation of the airport in Vancouver, Canada (YVR), in 2022.⁴ This platform was expressly created with experimentation in mind—its designers anticipated that YVR’s workers and surrounding community would come up with many more uses for it than they might originally conceive. The platform involves a mix of a virtual space with data collected in real-time from sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) tools throughout the facility. Data is used to inform daily decision-making and collaboration and explore future opportunities for improvement or innovation. Local teams are using the platform to improve outcomes as diverse as managing ground traffic control, improving worker safety and security, reducing carbon emissions from aircraft and other equipment, growing workforce skills, and modeling the expansion of the airport’s indigenous art collection. YVR sees the platform as central to its digital learning hub, an initiative to spur innovation and growth in the surrounding community.

Digital playgrounds can be expansive and include the opportunity to experiment with existing as well as emerging technologies. For example, physically demanding job sites in industries like shipping, construction, and natural resources are already combining technologies such as analytics, sensors, drones, digital models, IoT, edge computing, and extended reality (XR) technology to help workers operate more efficiently. Augmented extended reality (XR) and virtual extended reality (XR) technologies are providing workers with personalized, data-rich environments to engage with new skills and situations safely, or to collaborate better given complex task barriers such as geographic distance or lack of common language. Generative AI sandboxes are providing workers at every level of organizations with a safe space to imagine new combinations of AI and human work.

Digital playgrounds are safe spaces to realize possibilities while easing anxieties

Amidst the optimism surrounding the possibilities of these rapidly advancing technologies, there is also an undercurrent of anxiety and caution about their use. In November 2023, 28 countries—including 18 of the 20 largest economies in the world—issued a declaration committing themselves to responsible, human-centric use of AI.⁵ While the declaration highlighted AI’s potential “to transform and enhance human wellbeing, peace, and prosperity,” it also noted the harm that could result from misuse. Leaders are walking this line: According to the World Economic Forum, 75% of organizations globally intend to accelerate their use of AI over the next five years, while also anticipating significant disruption to current worker skills.⁶ Workers also see both sides: A global survey found that while 39% of workers are worried about the impact of AI on their job, 52% say that increased use of AI is likely to enhance their career possibilities.⁷

But the opportunities to positively affect human performance are also real. Among the new wave of digital and AI-powered technologies is a growing suite of tools that can enable workers and organizations to set the risks and uncertainties of the real world aside, providing a playground in which to explore, experiment, and cocreate solutions that make work better for humans and humans better at work.™ These tools include AI-powered people analytics; augmented, virtual, and extended reality; digital twins; digital doppelgangers; and more—technologies that not long ago were largely confined to science fiction. Many of these tools are already in use across industries to drive efficiencies, improve processes, train workforces, and explore new ways of working. Moving ahead, organizations will have an increasing array of technologies that could become a part of their digital playground to create improved outcomes for both workers and organizations. Consider the following examples:

• Generative AI: Generative AI is a subset of artificial intelligence in which machines leverage deep learning to generate new content in the form of text, code, voice, images, videos, and processes. The content is often indistinguishable from human-generated material.

One Fortune 500 software firm tested a new generative AI system with its customer service agents, who are required to have both detailed product knowledge and top-notch problem-solving skills to successfully resolve customer issues. The system combined a recent version of a GPT platform with proprietary machine learning algorithms based on data from previous customer service interactions among their 5,000 agents. It provided real-time suggestions for how agents should respond to customers, as well as links to relevant internal documentation to help solve technical issues. The firm realized a 14% increase in the number of chats an agent successfully resolved over the span of an hour—and an even greater increase (35%) for less experienced agents, helping them move more quickly through their learning curve.⁸

In Singapore, a coalition of digital government agencies launched a joint initiative in partnership with a leading technology company to drive generative AI capabilities in both the public and private sectors. Their approach to increasing generative AI capabilities includes “innovation sandboxes” and workshops to rapidly train people in AI and bring generative AI prototypes to production. The Singapore initiative goes beyond consumer-facing chatbots, seeking to create an AI-first culture that fosters innovation.⁹

• Digital twins: A digital twin is a near-real-time digital replica of a physical object (a car or human body), business process (supply chain), workforce (call center), or place (a factory, airport, or an entire city).

Before construction even began, BMW created a digital twin model of an electric vehicle production plant set to open in Debrecen, Hungary, in 2025.¹⁰ Digital twin simulations are allowing workers to train together in a virtual 3D environment, giving them the opportunity to gain familiarity with the new space and practice location-specific skills, with the freedom to experiment, play, and make mistakes. BMW teams can collaborate across multiple locations on any device. The digital twin model also allows engineers to work out bugs and make processes more efficient before the plant opens, saving time and cutting costs. The entire production process will be validated virtually before hardware is installed and robots are programmed to produce specific models. 

A British telecommunications company built a digital twin of their call center operations to monitor and visualize its live status and performance. The application allowed the user to experiment in real-time, varying staffing or making operational changes to see the impact on expected performance. A user could test the impact of different decisions related to work shifts, different ways of routing calls, and sudden surges in demand.¹¹

• Digital doppelgangers and digital humans: Digital doppelgangers replicate specific skills, knowledge, and other attributes of an individual or small team. A digital human is an avatar used in a virtual environment that can produce a whole range of human body language.

A global technology corporation patented a chatbot that can act and behave like a real person. The doppelganger is created using information that can be gathered from a person’s social media profile, including voice data, posts, messages, behavioral information, and images.¹² A team at MIT Media Lab is working on technology to enable machine intelligence to replicate a person’s digital identity so that others can “borrow their identity” to provide consultation or to help with decision-making in the absence of the source human. For example, the technology could be used to create a doppelganger of a corporate lawyer that provides legal expertise to clients at a reduced fee, in essence, “borrowing” the identity of the lawyer.¹³

HP already used AI in their call centers to route customer calls to the agents best equipped to handle them but has evolved the AI to act as a digital doppelganger, replicating the skills and expertise of high-performing call agents to incorporate into its algorithm.¹⁴

Celebrities and in-demand individuals are also experimenting with scaling access to their scarce time and attention. The Swedish band, ABBA, for example, launched a concert series in which the music was performed by their 3D digital avatars created from motion capture.¹⁵

• Augmented and virtual reality: AR overlays digitally created content into the user's real-world environment, usually through heads-up displays, mobile apps, and smart glasses, offering a seamless blend of the physical and virtual worlds. VR creates a highly immersive, fully rendered digital environment that entirely replaces the user's real-world surroundings.

The US Air Force is using AR/VR for training and reskilling for both pilots and maintenance crew, improving safety and accelerating curriculum completion by 46%. The AR/VR training program visualizes tools, systems, and aircraft for maintenance training, and the AI capability can provide personalized nudges to the airmen based on their learning style.¹⁶

• Analytics: Technologies such as analytics and AI have the potential to help organizations make better use of massive volumes of data. Real-time analytics applies logic and mathematics to data to provide insights that can enable users to make better decisions in real time. Auto-analytics is the practice of voluntarily collecting and analyzing data about oneself in order to improve.

A telecommunications company used AI to analyze the profiles of thousands of workers who identified themselves as machine learning experts to interpret the aggregation of skills, experience, and pathways relating to these workers’ machine learning skill development. The company then created algorithms to search for and hire based on those new metrics—increasing the talent pool by at least three times what the company had estimated.¹⁷ After hiring the workers who had these adjacent skills, the company then quickly built on the foundation of these skills to train the hired workers with the specific required machine learning skills. It now has technology that enables workers to compare their skills profile to different types of work and assess their fit, along with a list of skills they need to develop.

• 5G, drones, edge computing, Internet of Things, and sensors: These technologies expand the digital feedback loop to include the real world, where work happens. These technologies can be deployed to gather data to increase the fidelity of virtual copies, increase the volume of data to run simulations and scenarios, and to feed data back into the world to guide individuals and teams.

The EU is launching a digital simulation of the entire planet called Destination Earth, built from data collected by climate, atmospheric, and meteorological sensors.¹⁸ Scientists, policymakers, and business leaders from around the world will have a digital playground where they can access the data to model the socioeconomic impact of climate change. These analytics can help steer policy and business strategies, explore climate trends, test scenarios, and inform possible interventions and investments.

The full potential of these tools for enhancing work and exploring many possible futures is still emerging and can only be fully realized when they are curated and made widely available for the express purposes of experimentation and play.

In a time of disruption and possibility, experimentation and play can help humans learn to explore the unknown and the unexpected, to adapt, and to generate the imagination required to solve the challenges of a boundaryless world.¹⁹ To engage with disruption productively, the opportunity to play with the new and the unknown is important. However, enabling it—especially in a business context—requires explicit encouragement, opportunity, and psychological safety. As the pace of disruption accelerates, there will likely be a growing need for more opportunities and spaces to play—spaces that provide access to new technologies and are safe from risk for both the worker and the organization.²⁰

Disruption and evolving worker needs are driving the need for digital playgrounds

The pace of disruption is creating a world of increasing unpredictability and complexity. New ways of working—emerging seemingly in real time—introduce a host of complex questions. As a result, numerous factors appear to be driving an urgent need for organizations to bring play into focus:

• Entry-level roles are declining or may require new skills.²¹ In many organizations, the application of automation and AI technologies could reduce the need for some entry-level roles. Common, procedural office work is now often handled by software or requires far fewer people.²² For example, in customer service, chatbots are handling a significant portion of customer inquiries²³ and in health care, AI-based systems can take the first pass at coding a case, meaning companies may be able to leverage their experienced coders to audit the system’s decisions.²⁴

Additionally, some organizations now expect new entrants to come ready to put well-honed skills and human capabilities to use, as the remaining roles now require greater emotional intelligence and divergent thinking.²⁵ This change could have implications for the labor market, particularly among younger generations. Traditionally, entry-level roles allowed new workers the time and space to grow skills. As these roles become scarcer, digital playgrounds could provide spaces to build required experience and practice and develop new skills. For example, digital twins of human bodies and hospital environments can prepare medical professionals before they interact with real-life patients.²⁶ Digital doppelgangers of experienced sales executives can be personal, on-demand coaches for new salespeople. And VR is being used in power utilities to prepare workers to work in dangerous environments like electrical substations.²⁷

• The importance of human capabilities is increasing in the work. As work becomes more dynamic, less predictable, and more composed of making judgments in the face of constantly changing data, the relative importance of capabilities such as curiosity, empathy, and resilience as inputs to the work is rising. By giving workers a space to explore, experiment, and play, digital playgrounds can both cultivate and capitalize on workers’ human capabilities. Digital playgrounds can help workers refresh their skills, step into new roles, and adapt to a rapidly shifting job market. And they can help organizations develop the vision and resilience to thrive under challenging conditions.²⁸
• Workers need time and space to learn how to collaborate with smart technologies. In almost all the examples discussed so far, technology is not just replacing human effort or augmenting it. These smart technologies are handling tasks within processes and work groups, requiring new modes of interaction. The experience of the work for the human worker is changing,²⁹ likely explaining why executives in our research rated human-machine collaboration skills as very important. It’s not surprising, then, that human and machine collaboration³⁰ is an evolving field of inquiry—one of growing importance to human performance and worthy of the kinds of dedicated experimentation and play that could take place in the digital playground.
• Distributed teams are changing how work gets done. As we move further into a hybrid reality, workers are increasingly working at different times, in different places, and at varying speeds. Because of this, there is a pressing need for spaces for ideation, experimentation, and exploration that span time and distance. In one example, a digital playground enables a group of globally distributed scientists to manage the work of robots conducting chemistry experiments in a physical lab.³¹

In addition, younger workers tend to value hybrid work, distributed teams, and online interactions. Deloitte Global’s millennial and Gen Z study found that about half of all Gen Zs and millennials consider online experiences to be meaningful replacements for in-person experiences.³² For these workers, digital playgrounds will likely seem like a natural extension of the rest of their lives, and they will be ready to embrace their roles as active creators in digital spaces.

What’s at stake?

According to our research, 76% of workers say it’s very or moderately important that their organization help them imagine how their job may change in the future, but less than half (43%) of workers say their organization is helping them do so. Another recent study of global workers published in September of 2023 found that only 13% of workers had been offered AI-related skills training in the past year, despite a majority of workers believing that those skills would be essential to their future prospects.³³ Many organizations are not providing the time, space, opportunity, or tools to either experiment or play.

To help organizations succeed, workers should feel like active participants in the evolution of their roles. Giving them a place to explore and play can be a way to earn their buy-in. Plus, since humans tend to learn best by practicing, digital playgrounds support continuous learning and the development of new skills—particularly when it comes to collaborating with others and honing workers’ ability to work well with technology, a skill that will become more and more necessary in the coming years.³⁴

At a moment when worker roles are shifting, it’s important to create safe spaces in which organizations and workers can direct that change toward business outcomes and human sustainability broadly. Importantly, these outcomes will differ from organization to organization and from worker to worker. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Digital playgrounds give workers and organizations the opportunity to model different ways of working and determine the best fits given their specific goals and situations. Organizations that fail to explore with digital playgrounds run the risk of falling into conventional ways of working, which may put them at a disadvantage as technologies continue to advance and change what is possible. Since speed is a major differentiator in today’s world, the faster they start enabling these explorations, the better.

Building digital playgrounds that drive human performance

Building and maintaining successful digital playgrounds will likely require organizations to embrace new strategies, mindsets, and approaches to meet evolving workforce needs. But launching a digital playground doesn’t need to be a complicated, resource-intensive endeavor. It just requires you to start where you are with what you have: Many organizations are already using some of the tools one would expect to find in a digital playground. Creating access, psychological safety, and opportunities to play and experiment are the next steps. As organizations begin to build out digital playgrounds, they can consider the following actions:

• Democratize access to the digital playground. In many cases, only a few specialists are using digital playground tools in isolated ways—and with the intent to optimize specific processes, not to reimagine the art of the possible. Consider democratizing access to these tools, then expand where and how they are used to experiment in the short term and play in the future. As access to the playground is expanded, give special attention to mid-level leaders and front-line supervisors. These workers are often caught up in the operational challenges of the moment, working to meet short-term performance goals potentially at the expense of engaging their imagination to take a broader view. Digital playgrounds can help restore their curiosity and allow them to participate more fully in creative collaboration. Senior leaders, however, should consider giving workers space to play in their own playgrounds without leader involvement so they can experiment or fail without feeling exposed.
• Encourage play. Above all, digital playgrounds should be spaces where workers at all levels of an organization are given the time, encouragement, and opportunity to experiment and play. Encouraging play includes establishing norms and ground rules for the playground, making it clear that it’s perfectly acceptable to test ideas that fail or make mistakes with the technology. Workers should be rewarded for their efforts to engage with a digital playground and for innovations that result from their experimentation. In addition, organizations can encourage play by ensuring that workers understand what tools are available and have access to information that teaches them how to use different technologies. When workers are encouraged to play and experiment in a digital playground, they—and their organizations—are likely to be more practiced at adapting to disruption, putting them in a better position to navigate uncertainty and ensure that the organization is never lacking for imagination.
• Connect play to work. Play might be best when it’s open-ended, but that doesn’t mean it should be frivolous or disconnected from the purpose of the organization. Encourage exploration of domains and problem sets of import and interest to the organization. From a work design perspective, consider where engagement with the playground can be designed into the work on a day-to-day basis. Encourage teams to experiment and play together. Where possible, give those teams the space to be creative, including defining, and possibly refining, the scope of the real-world challenges in front of them based on what they learn on the playground. Consider how governance mechanisms for investment and innovation can seed imagination, establish playground rules where necessary, and harvest the best of ideas generated.
• Use digital playgrounds to cocreate. Cocreation is proving to be difficult for many organizations. Only 30% of executives say that they are regularly engaging workers in cocreation of strategies and solutions. Digital playgrounds can be less risky forums for inviting workers to cocreate changes in their own roles and their organizations’ future. Empowering workers in this way can enhance their sense of purpose, belonging, and resilience in the face of change.
• Focus on human sustainability. Digital playgrounds are more than just collections of the latest advanced technologies. As spaces to harness and develop the curiosity and imagination of human beings, the humans playing in them will need a solid foundation of well-being, psychological safety, and trust. In turn, these playgrounds are natural places in which to explore improving outcomes related to human sustainability; for example, using AR or VR to increase skills viability or using sensors and analytics to improve safety.
• Negotiate worker data. Many of the tools used in digital playgrounds, from AI-powered analytics to digital twins, can be applied to work, workforce, and workplace issues, but to increase their likelihood of success, they will require large quantities of worker data. Workers are increasingly demanding greater control of this data, and organizations should aim to use it to create mutual value, working from workforce data policies that are transparent and accessible.³⁵

Digital doppelgangers provide an especially pointed example of the importance of trust when it comes to the role of worker data in digital playgrounds. Since digital doppelgangers are often modeled on actual people, these people will need to provide their ongoing consent to share their knowledge and capabilities in digital form, and potentially own or share intellectual property. Some celebrities are already choosing to sell their likenesses for digital use,³⁶ while others are seeing doppelgangers created without their permission.³⁷ Workers with in-demand expertise, experience, and talents could find similar, lucrative opportunities to have their own doppelgangers created to scale their value in a way that benefits the wider organization. Exercise caution, as this is an emerging field with many questions not yet answered and many more not yet asked.³⁸

The future of digital playgrounds

Organizations will likely need many digital playgrounds, each involving different sets of tools, leaders, and workers. Each of these playgrounds may have a unique purpose. Some will be specific to certain projects or issues, and these may have a lifespan that ends when the project is over. Others will be more open-ended, with many potential uses.

In the example of the Vancouver International Airport discussed earlier, the platform was explicitly designed as a people-first technology, with operations teams being given free rein to imagine how to apply it. Already, these teams have found multiple uses. It supports worker training and testing of new methods. Data about passenger demand helps staff forecast wait times and identify potential processing issues, allowing workers to provide better service to passengers. Cameras detect if a vehicle has been parked outside the terminal curbside for an extended period, allowing operations and security teams to swiftly address the issue and improve the flow of traffic. Real-time information about maintenance needs enables maintenance staff to respond more efficiently to work orders.³⁹

These are just some examples of the ways in which leaders and workers are using the airport’s digital playground. Its potential uses for experimentation and play in service of better outcomes are practically infinite. It’s a demonstration of how, at their best, digital playgrounds are spaces of limitless possibility. Organizations and workers can both benefit from their capacity to engender new models and find solutions to urgent problems—none more urgent than the role of the worker in an increasingly tech-enabled workplace.